High White Sun

by J. Todd Scott

  “Come on, then, peckerwood. Let’s do this thing . . .” Earl closed his eyes, searching for his boys or Sunny or his brother or his daddy or Phyllis, but there was no one there.

  “It’s okay, son . . .”

  No one at all and he was alone.

  The boy moved in close to him, leaned in the way Nichols had. The boy breathed on his closed eyes and Earl thought he might be crying, or maybe not.

  “Blood out, motherfucker . . .”

  69

  SIX WEEKS LATER

  Chris was having trouble with the words, getting them right, or maybe it was the whole damn story itself. He didn’t know how it ended or even where it began.

  It didn’t help that Rocky kept staring at him, as if the dog was trying to read his thoughts.

  He put the pad down and watched the sun drop in the sky, leaving long, burnished shadows across the Far Six. After the big thunderstorm the night of the fire, everything had gone dry again. There was dust on the pages that he hadn’t been able to fill, and on his fingertips. He’d brought a bowl of water out for Rocky and the dog had already finished it.

  Giving the dog a good name had been tough. They’d considered “Harp” for a bit, but that just never quite worked. It was too easy, and also, it hurt far too much. Mel remembered that Buck used to have a dog he called “Rocket”—the last conversation she had with the deputy, just before he walked out of the bar and into the path of the Earls—but that didn’t quite fit, either. But it did give her the idea for “Rocky,” and they both liked that, so it stuck, even if they weren’t sure if the dog did. Sometimes he came to it, sometimes he didn’t (and that would have reminded Chris of Harp if everything else already didn’t), but his ears always went up when they called him. He knew his name and recognized it. He just chose to ignore it every now and then.

  Maybe it was the name that was giving Chris such a hard time with his story, or rather the loose jumble of ideas he hoped to hammer into a story. The name for his main character was important; he and the reader and the character all had to live with it, page after page. He could easily picture everything about his character, except for the name. Nothing worked.

  Hell with this.

  He tossed the pad down, knowing that he’d come back to it anyway, sooner or later. He always did. He’d wake up in the middle of the night with the ideas still turning over and over, just like he’d secretly practice the words and dialogue on Mel to see if it all sounded right. He guessed she really knew when he was doing it, but she never said anything about it, or asked him what he was trying so hard to get down on his endless sheets of paper.

  Just a story.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE GUNS MOVED.

  That was another thing that woke him up at night, those dreams of John Wesley Earl, and that moment just before he had pulled the trigger on his A5. Sheriff Ross had once told him that killing a man was different when you knew you were doing it, when you were looking him right in the face and had to see the life and light leave the other man’s eyes. Chris had thought Ross had just been shining him on, saying something—anything—to keep Chris from pulling the trigger of the gun he had aimed at him. And on that night, Chris hadn’t. He’d let Sheriff Ross walk out of the Big Bend Sheriff’s Department and it had ended up not mattering anyway, because Dupree had been waiting for him and gunned him down in his own living room. Chris hadn’t killed Sheriff Ross by his own hand, but he’d ended up dead all the same, just as if Chris had.

  The same was true for Earl. Two weeks ago, Earl had been stabbed to death in a state prison hospital, still recovering from the wounds Chris had given him.

  The guns moved.

  For the first few days after that night in Killing he’d written letters and made phone calls about Nichols. He’d figured out that Nichols was already on his way to Murfee after Ben and Buck’s shooting because he’d either guessed himself what Earl was up to, or because he’d told him about Danny Ford. Earl had even admitted as much: Nichols said he didn’t put you up to this, but I ain’t so sure . . .

  The last Chris had heard there was going to be some sort of inquiry or investigation about Nichols’s handling of it all, but Chris had since let it go.

  Nichols had to live with it, and it wasn’t like Chris’s own conscience was all that clear.

  Except in his dreams, where it was so clear, so obvious. Everything that had happened was lit bright by its own high sun, and Earl was at the very center of it, aiming a gun right at Amé’s head. But then when he woke up, when he tried to think about what exactly had happened that night and make some sense of it, it got all dark and unseeable again.

  I wanted to put him in the ground.

  And I did.

  The guns moved.

  And maybe that was just the story he wanted to tell himself.

  * * *

  • • •

  MEL CAME OUT, hiding something behind her back. Rocky stood up, yawned big, and walked over and then sat on his haunches next to her. The dog tolerated Chris, maybe even liked him on good days, but he adored Mel. Sometimes, though, they both caught him sitting at the end of their long drive, looking back down it into the heat and haze, like he was waiting for someone to appear. No amount of calling would make him come, and he’d stay there until he was done searching for whatever it was he was looking for.

  “How’s it going?” she asked, nodding toward his empty pad. It was all she ever asked about it.

  “Ahh, not so good.”

  “It’ll come,” she said.

  “Yes, I figure so.”

  “Vianey Ruiz starts tonight at Earlys. We’ll see how she works out.”

  “I appreciate you putting in a word for her, getting her hired.”

  “Well, your deputy can be pretty insistent. America wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I think it’ll be good. It’ll cut into my hours, but I’m fine with that. It’s probably necessary.”

  Chris nodded, but his own thoughts were elsewhere. He’d had the DNA results for Billy Bravo’s murder sitting on his desk at work for a week before bringing them home, and he still hadn’t looked at them. He’d asked Amé outside her burned house if it mattered whether Jesse’s blood was there or not, and she’d said it didn’t, and then she’d turned the same question on him, and he hadn’t answered. But he had to think it did matter. It was the difference, after all, between revenge and justice. That’s what he desperately wanted and needed to believe.

  The guns moved.

  He sat up, focused now on something Mel had just said. “Why is it necessary you get your hours cut?”

  She grinned, embarrassed. Her hair was down and it was longer than it had been in some time. It was in her face, covering her eyes, but they were still so damn bright. “You’ve been a bad, bad man . . .” She reached around from behind her back and held up something for him to see.

  It was a small purple box with the letters EPT in white. It took him a moment to even understand what he was looking at.

  “Is that . . . ?” He stopped, remembering the night he’d come back from Lubbock after meeting Nichols and Dyer. She’d sat up talking with him and then a whole lot more than that.

  . . . taking him back inside, sliding her robe off with nothing underneath, and letting him have a good long look, before pulling off his T-shirt and peeling down his shorts . . .

  “Yes, it is. And very keen investigative skills you have there, since it says it, you know, right on the box. But I haven’t taken it yet. I mean, it’s still so early . . . I’m pretty sure, but . . .” She held up the purple box. “Well, I was going to do it now. Not very romantic, I know.”

  He took the box from her and slipped it under his chair. “No, babe, don’t. It’s like reading the last page of a story first, just to know the end. Let’s be surprised . . . just see how things turn out.” He stood up. “And
speaking of not very romantic, stay here just a second, I’ll be right back.”

  He went in and fished around under the bed, where he’d been hiding what he’d bought in El Paso that day after talking with Garrison. It was the errand that had kept him there later that night when Ben and Buck were killed, and although he would never tell Mel that, she’d probably figure it out anyway.

  He came out with his own box in his hand, smaller than hers. “You know, after the last few weeks, there just wasn’t a good time to do this. Harp kept telling me I needed to make an honest woman out of you and all that, and if we’re going to be parents, well, then there’s no better time than now.”

  He started to open it, but she put her hand over his to keep him from revealing the ring inside. She put her other hand over her stomach, protective, like she was searching for the life she already knew was there. “No, not yet. Like you said, let’s just see how things turn out.”

  “You know, babe, one doesn’t have anything to do with the other. I don’t want you to think that, ever.”

  “I know, Chris. It’s not that. It’s just . . . are we ready for this, for any of this?” Now, with both hands wrapped around her stomach, she looked into his face, his eyes, for a long time, and the moment was broken only when Rocky suddenly barked, tearing off the porch into the flowering scrub, chasing a rabbit or shadows or whatever bad men or wolves he was afraid were out there.

  Chris pulled Mel close, holding her and the baby inside her tight against him as he watched their dog run free.

  “Hell no, babe, but we will be. We’re going to finish this story together . . .”

  * * *

  • • •

  LATER, AFTER SHE WAS LONG ASLEEP, he went back into the room they’d turned into his study, which might have to be a nursery before too long. He sat down at his makeshift desk and turned over the envelope holding the DNA results, weighing it. Everyone they suspected of Billy Bravo’s murder was already dead, and maybe the DNA results would prove nothing at all, but it was still an unsolved crime that had occurred on his watch. Harp had always stressed that Chris was responsible for his deputies and that he always had to be ready to deal with the bad men of the world, but he was responsible to all of their victims as well. That was his job, too. Maybe it was the most important part of it. He’d felt that way when he first found the skeletal remains of Amé’s brother in the desert, and his need to solve that murder and bring the killer to justice was what drove him to face Sheriff Ross. He’d felt it just as strong for Evelyn Ross, even as the empty months slipped by with no answers. He couldn’t lose sight of that, not ever again.

  That’s why he carried a badge and a gun.

  And Danny had said that Jesse Earl had made him burn a bloody T-shirt . . .

  He tore the envelope open and read the single paper inside by his small lamp. When he was done, he smiled, satisfied, and then folded it in half and put it away.

  * * *

  • • •

  HE FOUND HIS YELLOW PAD and tapped his pen against it, as moonlight moved outside the window.

  The night glowed, just for him, showing him the way.

  He just needed a good name, and then he could finally get on with his damn story.

  He’d never finish it, if he never got started.

  Ben.

  AFTER

  La Chica con la Pistola

  She was coming out of the apartment that used to be Ben’s and that was now hers until she figured out where she wanted to live, when she found the box. It wasn’t very big; sitting on the top step, unaddressed, and wrapped in paper.

  Her first fear was that it was some sort of explosive, so she backed away from it, fast, but the longer she looked at it, the less likely that seemed. It was more of an intuition, a guess, than anything else, but she bent down and carefully picked it up and brought it inside.

  It was heavier than she thought it would be.

  She contemplated calling Danny before she opened it, since she was already running late to meet him at Earlys, but decided against it. She wasn’t being secretive, necessarily, but she wanted the moment to herself when she finally pulled open the paper to see what was underneath.

  There was no writing, nothing to even indicate it was for her, but she knew it was.

  Slowly, she pulled back the butcher paper and found an ordinary cardboard box folded shut. She turned it around a couple of times, and when she couldn’t find anything else, she opened it. The overhead light scattered off something bright inside, something silver and pearl.

  A gun.

  At first she was afraid it was her brother’s gun, the one she would recognize anywhere and had left with Máximo in a hotel outside of Houston, but looking closer, she realized it wasn’t. It was very similar, but the etchings were different; some of the same calaveras, but no Jesús Malverde or Pancho Villa or the Virgin of Guadalupe. Instead, there was only one figure, obviously a woman, but skeletal and horrible—wrapped in a massive cloak, its own tiny skull-face smiling up at her, its hands holding a scythe and a globe.

  Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte.

  It was just a skinless skull with no face, but she could swear it had been carved to look just like her.

  La chica con la pistola.

  America pulled the gun out of the box, and just like Ben Harper had trained her, she checked to see if it was loaded . . .

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I faced a very different writing experience with this novel from what I faced with my first.

  The Far Empty had a life all its own; it carried no expectations, no deadlines, no competition or comparison. High White Sun, however, was born in the shadow of that first book (interesting, given its title), when I hadn’t originally committed to a sequel, and wasn’t even sure there’d be a second novel (the fear of probably every debut author, I guess). I did have some earlier notes about a young cop going undercover in an Aryan gang, but I just never found a way into that story I liked . . . until I wrote the opening Sweetwater sequence for what became this book, and the very first Danny Ford chapter: This is how you stop a man’s heart . . .

  From there, it was an easy decision to set Danny’s confrontation with the Earls against the backdrop of my fictional Big Bend County, along with a little help from Sheriff Cherry and America Reynosa.

  Although writing this second book was a helluva lot different from writing the first one, what did stay the same was the amazing team of people who brought it to life. So, here we go again . . .

  Thanks to my agent, Carlie Webber, who continues to insist that I know what I’m doing, and Sara Minnich, Ashley Hewlett, Allison Hargraves, Anna Jardine, and everyone else at Putnam who has helped prove her right. Neither of these books would exist without their tireless efforts. Next up: Delcia Scott (each and every word is yours), the Scott girls, the Scott and Martin families, and all my friends—both personal and professional—who’ve supported me over the course of two books and nearly a thousand manuscript pages. When I’m working through a long novel like this, some days are definitely harder than others, but there are always a few people who drop in to see how I’m doing. This time around, that included Julianne C, Angie D, Vianey M (the “real Vianey”), Brian P, and my former boss, Will R. Glaspy, who’s the most authentic Texan I’ve ever known. I’d also like to thank/recommend a few other writers I’ve met along the way: Jeff Abbott, Ace Atkins, Jay Busbee, Reed Farrell Coleman, David Joy, Robert Knott, and Brian Panowich. These gentlemen are amazing storytellers, and more than a hundred years ago they would have made a damn fine posse, too.

  I also need to recognize District Attorney Rod Ponton, who was kind enough to answer some very specific questions. All factual errors are mine.

  And finally, thanks to you . . . to all of you who’ve saddled up for what I hope will continue to be a very long ride.

  I don’t know when or where we’ll meet again,
but the Balcones and beers are on me . . .

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  J. Todd Scott has been a federal agent with the DEA for more than twenty years, working cases investigating international maritime smuggling, domestic meth labs, and Mexican cartels. A Kentucky native, he now resides in the Southwest, which provided the backdrop for The Far Empty and High White Sun.

  JToddScott.com

  jtoddscottcom

  J_ToddScott

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  * * *

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.